The Ombudsman for Short-Term Insurance (OSTI) last week released his report for the 2014 calendar year, summarizing the key activities of his office for this period. The OSTI is an independent body to which clients can complain if they believe they have been treated unfairly by a short-term insurer. The release included statistics on the number of complaints received by the OSTI per 1,000 claims handled by an insurer (the referral rate), as well the OSTI overturn rate, which refers to the percentage of complaints where the OSTI finalised the complaint with some benefit to the complainant.
Paying claims is at the core of the OUTsurance business – the company views it as the single most important thing that it does. Its approach to paying claims goes much further than merely discharging its contractual insurance obligations; it’s developed a broader philosophy that really looks to ensure that equity and fairness prevail at all times, regardless of what the insurance contract provisions dictate.
According to the statistics contained in the OSTI report, OUTsurance did extremely well by comfortably beating the industry average for both the referral rate and the overturn rate. In fact, OUTsurance returned the best performance of all the large typical short-term insurers when the product of these two key numbers is observed, in that only 2.4 claims per 10,000 processed were overturned by the OSTI.
Ernst Gouws, the CEO of OUTsurance remarked following the release of the report; “This is a superb achievement. I am extremely proud of each and every member of our claims staff. To have once again delivered such low referral and overturn rates is proof that we have the right culture and approach in dealing with claims and looking after our clients. At OUTsurance, giving people great value-for-money insurance products does not mean sub-standard service or claim settlements.”
The statistics and explanatory notes thereto are available on pages 14-17 of the 2014 OSTI report located at http://www.osti.co.za/annual-reports.html